Full length articleCultivating youth resilience to prevent bullying and cyberbullying victimization
Introduction
The well-worn adage “sticks and stones may break your bones but words can never hurt you” has long been offered to console bullied youth. The reality, however, is that words can hurt, and sometimes very deeply. But they don’t have to. For some who are targeted with hurtful epithets, what is said can be devastating. For others, the words mean nothing at all. For still others, the impact lies somewhere along a continuum between these two extremes. This begs the question: is there a personal characteristic or trait that buffers against external stressors, such as bullying? That is, are some youth who are targeted for certain types of harm better able than others to brush it off? And if so, can the protective factor be identified, cultivated and strengthened? Despite modest progress over the last decade, schools have not been able to drastically reduce the frequency of adolescent peer aggression (Boulton & Boulton, 2012; Finkelhor, Vanderminden, Turner, Shattuck, & Hamby, 2014; Kendrick, 2015; Yeager, Fong, Lee, & Espelage, 2015). As such, is there utility in training students to be “overcomers” instead of invoking the narrative that they are “victims” who must rely on adults to always come to their aid?
The current paper explores the role of resilience in protecting youth from the deleterious consequences of interpersonal harm. Resilient kids are those who, for a variety of reasons, are better able to withstand external pressures and setbacks. We theorize that they are also positioned and equipped to handle and rebuff peer aggression in many of its various forms. We begin with a brief review of existing bullying and cyberbullying scholarship to provide a framework upon which an argument can be built for developing resilience in youth as a strong protective factor.
Section snippets
Adolescent bullying
In January of 2014, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Education, and the Health Resources and Services Administration worked with a number of bullying experts across various fields to develop a uniform definition of bullying:
Bullying is any unwanted aggressive behavior(s) by another youth or group of youths who are not siblings or current dating partners that involves an observed or perceived power imbalance and is repeated multiple times or is
Resilience
Traditionally, approaches towards bullying (and health in general) are pathogenic, inducing professionals to focus on mitigating risk factors and identifying and ameliorating the deficiencies in the lives of an individual (Garbarino, 2001). While this method has borne some fruit in terms of prevention by reshaping and reconditioning the environment around students (Ttofi & Farrington, 2012), a different paradigm may be necessary to make further headway in addressing the problem. Instead of
Research on resilience and bullying
The empirical relationship between resilience and bullying is complex when considering definitional, contextual, and methodological differences between studies, but on the whole relatively consistent when focusing on the direction of key relationships (Bowes, Maughan, Caspi, Moffitt, & Arseneault, 2010; Greeff & Van den Berg, 2013; Sapouna & Wolke,2013) (for an exception, see (Narayanan & Betts, 2014)). Only a few inquiries have empirically explored the relationship between bullying and
Present study
Overall, research reviewed above can be distilled into the notion that children with higher levels of resilience (produced by intrinsic and extrinsic protective strengths in their personal profiles) are not only bullied less often but are less negatively impacted in their attitudes and actions than their less-equipped peers when faced with this type of victimization (Donnon and Hammond, 2007, Overbeek et al., 2010). The current study aims to further explore this relationship, using a validated
Methodology
Data for the current study came from a survey administered to a nationally-representative sample of English-speaking 12–17 year old middle and high school students residing in the United States. Distributed in October 2016, the survey examined perceptions of, and experiences with, bullying, cyberbullying, and electronic teen dating violence. Parental consent and child assent was obtained for all participants. We contracted with a marketing research firm to distribute our instrument via email
Resilience
Research has found that resilience is grounded in a number of factors: biological (Charney, 2004), psychological (Campbell-Sills, Cohan, & Stein, 2006), and social (Haskett et al., 2006). As such, a biopsychosocial scale is necessary to properly measure this concept. The Connor-Davidson Resilience 25-item self-report scale (CD-RISC) seems to hold the most promise based on its psychometric properties (Connor & Davidson, 2003). Since its creation, Campbell-Sills and Stein (2007) applied
Analysis
Statistical analyses were conducted using SPSS (version 18.0). We first computed descriptive statistics to better understand the characteristics of the sample and nature of bullying and cyberbullying experiences among middle and high school students. Next, logistic regression analysis was used to examine the effect of resilience on experience with bullying and cyberbullying. As an analytic technique, logistic regression is appropriate when dichotomous outcome variables are used (Menard, 1995).
Experience with bullying
Table 2 presents the proportion of students in our sample who reported experiencing various forms of bullying and cyberbullying in the previous 30 days. Notably, when we asked students if they had “been bullied at school,” 23% reported that they had. But when examining different behaviors that might constitute bullying, many more students reported experiencing them. For example, 46% said they were called mean names and 42% said they were left out of things on purpose or excluded from their group
Discussion
The current study reaffirmed the relationship between resilience and experience with bullying (both at school and online). Uniformly, students with higher levels of resilience were less likely to report that they had been bullied at school or online, and among those who were bullied, resilience seemed to serve as a buffer, insulating them from being significantly disrupted at school. This latter finding is particularly important given a majority of youth will experience some form of bullying at
Limitations
Even though this study highlights the current state of bullying among adolescents, as well as the importance of resilience in mitigating its occurrence and consequences, it is not without limitations. We sought to obtain a nationally-representative sample of middle and high school students across the United States but can never be certain of the generalizability of the results from the data. Even though the demographic characteristics of the sample closely match those of the U.S., there could
Implications
The current analysis showed that resilience serves as a protective factor to insulate youth from some levels of harm when bullied or cyberbullied. Given the findings in the present study and the bulk of the literature base, our bullying and cyberbullying prevention efforts must not neglect this crucial construct. Accordingly, certain research-informed strategies may be useful to prepare students for life by intentionally teaching and cultivating certain socioemotional skills within caring
Funding source
This research was made possible by a grant from the Digital Trust Foundation.
References (153)
- et al.
Associations among bullying, cyberbullying, and suicide in high school students
Journal of Adolescence
(2013) - et al.
Relationship of resilience to personality, coping, and psychiatric symptoms in young adults
Behaviour Research and Therapy
(2006) - et al.
Understanding the relationship between resiliency and bullying in adolescence: An assessment of youth resiliency from five urban junior high schools
Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America
(2007) - et al.
Bullying behavior and associations with psychosomatic complaints and depression in victims
Journal of Pediatrics
(2004) - et al.
Youth exposure to violence prevention programs in a national sample
Child Abuse & Neglect
(2014) - et al.
Longitudinal and reciprocal relations of cyberbullying with depression, substance use, and problematic internet use among adolescents
Journal of Adolescent Health
(2013) - et al.
Diversity in adjustment of maltreated children: Factors associated with resilient functioning
Clinical Psychology Review
(2006) - et al.
Psychological, physical, and academic correlates of cyberbullying and traditional bullying
Journal of Adolescent Health
(2013) - et al.
Linking exposure to strain with anger: An investigation of deviant adaptations
Journal of Criminal Justice
(1998) - et al.
Strain, anger, and delinquent adaptations: Specifying general strain theory
Journal of Criminal Justice
(2000)
Bullying prevalence across contexts: A meta-analysis measuring cyber and traditional bullying
Journal of Adolescent Health
Locus of control orientation: parents, peers, and place
Journal of Youth and Adolescence
The salutogenic model as a theory to guide health promotion
Health Promotion International
Life stress, anger and anxiety, and delinquency: An empirical test of general strain theory
Journal of Health and Social Behavior
Life span theory in developmental psychology
A formal assessment of resilience: The baruth protective factors inventory
The Journal of Individual Psychology
Positive youth development: Theory, research, and applications
Developmental assets and asset-building community: Conceptual and empirical foundations
Developmental Assets and Asset-building Communities
The effects of a multiyear universal social-emotional learning program: The role of student and school characteristics
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
LGB and questioning students in schools: The moderating effects of homophobic bullying and school climate on negative outcomes
Journal of Youth and Adolescence
The emotional reaction of school bullies and their victims
Educational Psychology
The extent and nature of bullying among primary and secondary schoolchildren
Educational Research
Resistant to the message: Are pupils unreceptive to teachers’ anti-bullying initiatives and if so why?
Educational Studies
Families promote emotional and behavioural resilience to bullying: Evidence of an environmental effect
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
College students’ sense of belonging and social support: Potential factors in resilience
Self-esteem and loneliness in relation to cyberbullying in three European countries
Gender and crime: A general strain theory perspective
Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency
Cyberbullying and online harassment: Reconceptualizing the victimization of adolescent girls
Aggression, social cognitions, anger and sadness in bullies and their victims
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
Psychometric analysis and refinement of the connor-davidson resilience scale (CD-RISC): Validation of a 10-item measure of resilience
Journal of Traumatic Stress
Sticks and stones can break my bones, but how can pixels hurt me?
School Psychology International
Psychobiological mechanisms of resilience and vulnerability
Focus
The developing brain and neural plasticity: Implications for normality, psychopathology, and resilience. Developmental psychopathology, Vol. 2. Developmental neuroscience
Development of a new resilience scale: The Connor-Davidson resilience scale (CD-RISC)
Depression and Anxiety
The effects of city-wide implementation of Second Step on elementary school students’ prosocial and aggressive behaviors
The Journal of Primary Prevention
The power of social support: Mentoring and resilience
Reclaiming Children and Youth
Improving young children’s social and emotional competence: A randomized trial of the preschool PATHS curriculum
The Journal of Primary Prevention
The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions
Child Development
Addressing the problem of juvenile bullying
Examining the social context of bullying behaviors in early adolescence
Journal of Counseling & Development
Adolescent resilience: A framework for understanding healthy development in the face of risk
Annual Review of Public Health
An ecological perspective on the effects of violence on children
Journal of Community Psychology
Social emotional learning and bullying prevention
Contemporary Perspectives on Research on Bullying and Victimization in Early Childhood Education
Peer victimization, cyberbullying, and suicide risk in children and adolescents
JAMA
Bullying surveillance among youths: Uniform definitions for public health and recommended data elements
Resilience in children
Resilience in families in which a child is bullied
British Journal of Guidance & Counselling
Twenty years’ research on peer victimization and psychological maladjustment: A meta-analysis review of cross-sectional studies
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
Bullying victimization and adolescent self-harm: Testing hypotheses from general strain theory
Journal of Youth and Adolescence
Cited by (144)
Protective factors contributing to adolescents’ multifaceted digital resilience for their wellbeing: A socio-ecological perspective
2024, Computers in Human BehaviorA person-centered approach to resilience against bullying victimization in adolescence: Predictions from teacher support and peer support
2023, Journal of Affective DisordersBidirectional longitudinal relationships between victimization, resilience and suicidal ideation of adolescents
2023, Children and Youth Services ReviewAssociations between resilience and symptoms of depression and anxiety among adolescents: Examining the moderating effects of family environment
2023, Journal of Affective DisordersCyber Victimization, Coping Methods, and Attitudes of the Family Toward Internet Use in Adolescents Applying to the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Department During the Pandemic
2024, Turkish Journal of Child and Adolescent Mental Health